1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to apparatus for processing edible nuts and more particularly is directed towards a new and improved apparatus for slitting the skins of edible nuts
2. Description of the Prior Art
Edible nuts, such as peanuts, grow with an outer hard shell and the nut meat itself is covered wit a tight fitting dark skin. Many consumers find the skin to be objectionable and in the production of many nut products it is the practice to remove the nut skins by various blanching procedures. One such technique is disclosed in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,269,442 and the related equipment is disclosed in my U.S. Pats. 3,196,914 and 3,217,764. This technique involves first passing the nuts through slitting machines which form thin slits in the nut skin from end to end of the nuts, dehydrating the nut to cause the skin to curl back slightly from the nut meat and then feeding the nuts onto a conveyor which is provided with a plurality of spaced abrasive baffles extending diagonally across the upper reach of the conveyor. The nuts are carried diagonally across the belt and forwardly against the baffles effectively removing all of the nut skins with a minimum percentage of broken nuts.
While the foregoing techniques and related apparatus have proven to be satisfactory for their intended purpose, it has now been found that adjustments that must be made to the machines when the average size of the nuts being processed changes is a somewhat tedious and painstaking process. Furthermore, the cleaning of the machinery has also been found to be time consuming because of the need for partial dismantling of the equipment to get at the parts to be cleaned.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide improvements in machines for slitting the skins of edible nuts. A more specific object of this invention is to provide a machine for slitting nut skins wherein the machine may be quickly and easily adjusted to accommodate to different sizes of nuts and to insure that all nut slitting machines in a row are adjusted to the same setting corresponding to the nut size being processed. It is another object of this invention to provide a nut skin slitting machine that is quickly and easily cleaned and serviced.